TODAY'S NEWS HEADLINES for INDEPENDENT VOTERS 10/30/09

Hi everyone!

I'm on the stump for electing the first independent mayor of NYC on Column C the Independence Party line (no surprise there!) and will keep you up to date as best as I can. Lots happening! Note the majority of voters in New Jersey are independent. New Jersey is one of my (many) home states (and my first home state out of the South) so I'm especially proud of us Garden Staters, whoever you decide to elect for Gov!...

Here in my current home state (and more accurately, my home town of the Big Apple) Mike Bloomberg, in coalition with the NYC Independence Party, carries out an independent nonpartisan race for the future of New York City. See the photo from last night's phone shift in Jamaica Queens -- a coming together of a long-time coalition between Imam Charles Bilal (that's organizer Martha Oliver (r) in the picture) the Queens County Committee of the New York Independence Party, and Bloomberg's local operation (that's Etoy Tharpe, second from left here)

And in LAST WORD(S) -- I hope you'll take a peek at the left/right Dem/Repub dialogue that permeates the print media and the blogosphere. As a long-time leftist and still true Marxist (I got my bonafides in the 1970s in the labor and new left party-building movement and never gave up...), I'm always happy to see progressives take on the right wingers as in Radical? Not! (By Eugene Debs, New Majority) below.
-NH


NJ GOV RACE

• Bergen County a key factor in governor's race (By Cynthia Burton, Philadelphia Inquirer) Democrats outnumber Republicans there, 169,000 to 111,200. But the biggest voting group, as it is everywhere else in the state, consists of unaffiliated voters, who number 250,300. Unaffiliated voters have recently been voting with the Democrats.
• Election not a big draw to Gloucester County voters (By Jessica Landolfi, NJ News-Star Ledger, Trenton Times) Democrats outnumber Republicans 2 to 1 with 70,744 registered Democrats, 35,637 Republicans and 82,607 unaffiliated.

BLOOMBERG 09

• Thompson Endorsed by Cuomo (By NICHOLAS CONFESSORE, NY Times)

NY SPECIAL ELECTION UPSTATE

• Hoffman and Owens in a Tie for New York Special Election (CQ Politics/PollTracker)
• A GOP Civil War in Upstate New York (By KATE PICKERT, Time) But then, the race in the 23rd is no longer about local issues. It's about a Republican Party with little current power inside the Beltway searching for a way out of the wilderness. And it's about conservative Republicans sending a message — the future of the party is the conservative base. (It's also, incidentally, about money; according to the Federal Election Commission, more than $650,000 has flowed to the candidates from independent groups just since Oct. 24.) "The 23rd has as little significance as Gettysburg. It's just where the Armies met," says Bob Gorman, managing editor of the Times and my old boss. "Everybody was looking for a fight and that's where they found each other."

WORKING FAMILIES PARTY

• ACORN: Vann, go (By DAVID SEIFMAN, NY Post)
• Court of Appeals won’t hear Bethlehem WFP case (by Jordan Carleo-Evangelist, Albany Times Union/Local Politics)

LAST WORD(S)

• Radical? Not! (By Eugene Debs, New Majority)
• Our Heritage  Newt Gingrich weighs in on events current and Founding-era. (interview by Robert Costa, National Review Online)
• Are the Tea Partiers good or bad for the GOP? A round table discussion of whether the revolt of the conservative base is a blessing or curse for the Republicans (BY THOMAS SCHALLER, Salon)  EXCERPT: Agne: What we found was that even as these independents have started to pull back from Obama and the Democrats in Congress a bit -- some concern about healthcare, some concern about spending, a few other things -- they still fundamentally want them to succeed. They want to see the edges come off some of these policies, but they want to see it go through. They want the change that Obama promised them in the election, they're just not quite sure what that change should look like. The Republican base voters fundamentally want Obama to fail. They believe that he is intentionally trying to lead the country into a ditch, essentially, that he is trying to lead the country to failure, and thus to socialism. And so they see it as a moral responsibility to oppose every single step of his agenda. There's no sense of compromise. There is a clear moral obligation to stand firm and oppose him, no matter what. And that's really the fundamental dilemma that we were just discussing.
• Self-Image and Party Politics (By DAVID BROOKS AND BOB HERBERT, NY Times/The Conversation) Is it possible for both parties to lose at the same time?
• More Signs of Trouble for 2010 (William Galston, The New Republic)